Rogue Scholar Posts

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Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Matt Wedel

I don’t remember now when I first noticed bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines. I imagine 2016 at the latest, because on our Sauropocalypse that year Mike and I saw examples at both BYU and Dinosaur Journey.

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Matt Wedel

Here are some cervical ribs of sauropods that show a spectrum of morphologies, from a low dorsal process that makes an obtuse angle with the shaft of the rib in Dicraeosaurus (upper right), to one that makes a right angle in Brontosaurus (center), to a prominent spike of bone in Apatosaurus (bottom left), to a […]

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Mike Taylor

Everybody(*) knows that the turiasaurian sauropod Moabosaurus has bifurcated cervical ribs: it was all anyone was talking about back when that animal was described (Britt et al. 2017). We’ve featured the best rib here before, and here it is again: (*) All right, but you know what I mean.

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Matt Wedel

I haven’t blogged about blogging in a while. Maybe because blogging already feels distinctly old-fashioned in the broader culture. A lot of the active discussion migrated away a long time ago, to Facebook and Twitter, and then to other social media outlets as each one in turn goes over the enshittification event horizon.

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Matt Wedel

New paper out today in PeerJ: Lei R, Tschopp E, Hendrickx C, Wedel MJ, Norell M, Hone DWE. 2023. Bite and tooth marks on sauropod dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation. PeerJ 11:e16327 http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16327 This one had a long gestation.

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Mike Taylor

Utahraptor is a “giant” dromaeosaurid from Utah, described by Kirkland et al. (1993). Famously, its existence was part of the reason that the people making Jurassic Park felt at liberty to make their “Velociraptor” individuals not only much bigger than the turkey-sized Velociraptor proper, but also than than sheep-sized Deinonychus.

Published in Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
Author Mike Taylor

As all good SV-POW! regulars will know, Elmer S. Riggs published the name Brachiosaurus altothorax in a short (but not trival) 1903 paper (Riggs 1903) and followed it up with a proper descriptive monograph (Riggs 1904) that had several useful plates.